You want a vision for the future of health care? Don’t look to policymakers and regulators. Look to innovators and innovations.

He goes on to describe one company's (Scanadu) vision of the consumer Tricorder:

...patient-centric healthcare as a personal information service, in your control – in your hands – amplified by the Cloud.

We hear a lot about "patient-centric health care" these days, but it often leads to the same old centralized, top-down health care. Mills dispels such notions:

As we push more knowledge and control back to consumers – keeping otherwise largely healthy people away from expensive facilities – people become healthier and happier, and costs will come down. The Tricorder capabilities will also enhance outpatient monitoring and care — the latter perhaps the most challenging Achilles’ heal buried in medical costs.

I don't understand why Mills calls this "Social Medicine." The Tricorder is personal health technology, and the type of medicine it portends is personal medicine (rather than personalized medicine). There is certainly a social component to PatientsLikeMe, but its primary value is decentralizing information about medical conditions, treatments, and health care providers.

Mills is right: We should not look to policymakers and regulators to create more effective and cost-effective health care. But the Tricorder will only achieve its full potential if policymakers and regulators get out of the way and stay out of the way. A long, hard battle lies ahead.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: